Jakarta Then and Now

JAKARTA – While it’s often impossible to see Jakarta’s rich history buried among the capital’s never-ending traffic jams, malls, slums and office towers, Scott Merrillees, a coal executive, historian and long-time Jakarta resident, has discovered tiny windows onto the capital’s past in the form of antique postcards.

Since landing in Jakarta from Australia in the 1980s, he has collected hundreds of old postcards to learn more about the messy megacity, which previously was the capital of the Dutch East Indies. This year, he published the best bits of his collection in a handsome coffee-table book called “Greetings From Jakarta: Postcards of a Capital 1900-1950.”